In recent years, a household electrical appliance management system in which a communication device is configured by providing a near field communication module in a household electrical appliance, the communication device is caused to perform near field communication with a mobile terminal, the communication device is connected to a management device provided on the Internet via the mobile terminal, and the management device is caused to manage the communication device is becoming prevalent. In such a household electrical appliance management system, it is possible to display various information items of the household electrical appliance on the display of the mobile terminal, and make access to the management device such as a server via the mobile terminal to receive various services from the management device.
In order to implement such a household electrical appliance management system, an identification information item for individually identifying the communication device is assigned to the communication device, and the management device manages each communication device by using the identification information item as a key.
Incidentally, there are cases where the communication module is replaced with new one due to a failure or the like. In these cases, the new communication module is sometimes provided with another identification information item different from the identification information item of the original communication module. Consequently, when the identification information item of the new communication module is adopted as the identification information item of the communication device, a problem arises in that the communication device cannot continuously receive services that have been provided from the management device.
As a conventional art for solving the above problem, for example, Patent Document 1 is known. Patent Document 1 discloses a device in which, for the purpose of preventing the identification information item of the device from being changed even when a part constituting the device is replaced, the identification information item stored in a nonvolatile memory is backed up in a multiple backup mechanism at the time of activation of the device when the device is initially installed and, when the device is activated after the initial installation, the identification information item stored in the multiple backup mechanism is read and the read identification information item is determined as the identification information item of the device.
However, in Patent Document 1, consideration is given only to a case where only the part constituting the device is replaced, and no consideration is given to a case where only the multiple backup mechanism is replaced or a case where both of the part constituting the device and the multiple backup mechanism are replaced at the same time. Therefore, Patent document 1 has had a problem that, in these cases, it is not possible to cause the communication device to take over a latest possible identification information item.
Patent Document 1: Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2002-126310